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A Tale of Two Towers

By Anne A. Jambora, WPI '05
Makati City, Philippines

By Anne A. Jambora

This is a tale of two towers, and then some.

One is timeless and majestic, soaring into the languid sky with regal comportment and assurance as if always ready to delight her spectators in the city that never sleeps. The other is calm and distant — aloof, almost — unperturbed by the commotion and flurry on the concrete enclave beneath her, yawning like a black phantom as the windy city that nestles her falls into a deep slumber.

Like the biblical Tower of Babel, these magnificent modern-day amalgams of metal and concrete are testaments to the vanity of the human ego — to dream the impossible, to conquer what no one has dared, to achieve the unthinkable. It is man’s pride that pushes him to make tangible the incredible in pretext of answering a far more heroic mission known as progress. Ah, man, vanity is thy name!

But while the Tower of Babel represented human sin in its most explicit form and spawned a “confusion of languages” upon its fateful demise, these two celebrated modern skyscrapers — the Empire State Building in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago — symbolize wealth and power. And both reflect the communities that nourish them.

Where I come from, our modest early towers were belfries, the hearts of many Hispanic Philippine towns. They were of solid masonries that stood attached to churches until the Spanish friars and architects realized they should be detached and several feet away. (The country has the misfortune of lying between two of the world’s most active tectonic plates and experiences about five earthquakes per day. Although most tremors are imperceptible, some crumbled to oblivion many remarkable church structures of Baroque architecture and, along with them, the vulnerable belfries.)

The intentions of the belfries were gallant and practical. Always looming higher than any other edifice in town, they served as watchtowers for marauding pirate ships. Hence they were always located near the shorelines. During a crisis, the deep bass sound of the bells would stir a town to full alert. As Filipino men rushed to shore to defend their villages, women and children fled inside churches for refuge.

(The early Hispanic urban planning in colonized Philippines decreed that churches and their belfries be located adjacent to government buildings, with a town plaza right in front. Town activities were centered in the plaza where one could find entertainment and shopping and catch up on the latest news and gossip. It was therefore a very convenient strategy for the Catholic Church to watch over — quiet literally — its flock.)

A good number of these belfries stood the test of time and, like the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building, their place in modern society is deeply embedded in the hearts of Filipinos. But while little is known of our diminutive belfries, the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building are seen around the world as beacons of the flight of man’s imagination.

Lustrous among the stars

Standing proud, the 103-story Empire State Building was constructed beginning in March 1930, during the Great Depression, with big dreams of erecting the tallest building in the world. While the quest to conquer greater heights still holds true to this day, the rivalry then over who could build the tallest building was as palpable as the race toward the moon in the 1960s.

It rises 1,250 feet (1,454 including the lightning rod which, incidentally, gets hit by lightning about 100 times a year.) The entrance alone is four floors high and the lobby an expansive three floors. Many of its 6,500 windows are lit up on a busy evening, with spotlights dramatically casting a delightful play of light and shadow on its tower in full theatric performance.

And why not? This is, after all, New York City, the home of Broadway and off-Broadway, music, dance and art. A melting pot of the interesting oddities of diverse and intrinsic cultures — whether peculiar, eccentric or predictable — NYC is a magnet for immigrants, legal and illegal, who are drawn by the city’s rich and vibrant lifestyle. The city breathes out an intense, larger-than-life excitement that fascinates the unassuming traveler, and the Empire State Building mirrors that surreal experience, its notable Art Deco facade gleaming lustrous among the faint evening stars.

Like native New Yorkers, power-dressed in snappy suits and striding purposefully along Wall Street or street-chic in eclectic SoHo, the Empire State Building is at once both majestic and flamboyant, and yet it is never off-putting, as if it were born to entertain. In its simplicity, luminous like the sunlight that leisurely peeks from a thick morning mist, it is ready to regale its captive audience, to tease the imagination until one is sufficiently enthralled to walk into its hallways.

The winding queue of visitors that goes on forever — at the ticket booth, security, elevator, stairway — is probably the ultimate test to a human being’s capacity for enduring patience. According to its official Web site, the Empire State Building receives about 3.5 million visitors annually and has had more than 120 million visitors since it opened to the public in 1931

Epitomized by self possession and confidence

A more restrained and understated “second city” — located more than 700 miles west of New York City, where gusts of wind rush to shore from the world’s sixth largest freshwater lake, Lake Michigan — harbors the tallest building in the United States. Visually arresting and commanding at 1,450 feet, or 1,725 feet including antennas, the 110-story building with black aluminum panels looms over the Chicago skyline in a lucid picture of strength and power.

The Sears Tower, however grand and impressive, is composed and unpretentious, comfortably snuggled on Wacker Drive as if withdrawn from the gawking eyes of tourists. It is simply not wanting of adulation, secure in its position and unaffected by architectural wonders elsewhere in the world. It is impervious yet never arrogant, and when darkness sweeps across the city it gradually becomes inconspicuous among its neighbors.

It is this intrinsic character of self-possession and confidence that epitomize those who call Chicago their home. While the city has its share of noteworthy theater life, arts and a stunning architectural landscape, the locals are seemingly prudent and thoughtful. They don’t drape themselves in fancy glitz. If they shine it is never in superficial brilliance; it is because they simply do. There is, after all, more to the city than Al Capone and the Mafia.

Completed in 1973, the Sears Tower is composed of four mega modules, each rising over the other. The contemporary design, according to the building’s Web site, was said to have been inspired by a pack of cigarettes when one of the architects tapped a handful of cigarettes into his hands and saw each rising at different heights.

The Empire State Building has an Observation Deck on the 86th floor; the Sears Tower has a Skydeck on the 99th. The Sears Tower cost $175 million to make. Thirty years earlier, toward the outset of the Depression, the Empire State Building cost $41 million. Both are outstanding works of art and, perhaps by chance or perhaps by design, both were created in the likeness and image of their communities.

Many a tower have come and gone but the Empire State Building and the Sears Tower so far have endured and continue to rouse the mind’s eye with delirious vertical dreams.